The Account of Monte Cristo
Spine-tingling adventures of a hapless breakfast sandwich
The headwaiter took Jonah and his three sisters to a table in the back of the bistro. A large man was seated there with his back to the wall, his torso squeezed partway behind the table as if he couldn’t decide whether to stay or go.
They acknowledged each other without speaking, and the man nodded to the waiter. “That’ll be all for now, Marcel.”
The white-clad server gently placed a small cup of maple syrup on the table and bowed obsequiously as he shuffled backwards into the kitchen, his shiny silver tray tucked under his arm.
The man against the wall squeezed his ample belly further behind the table as he surveyed the room. It was a quiet time of the day, late for lunch and early for dinner. Only one other couple was in the small French restaurant. They appeared to be harmless tourists with cameras and fanny packs enjoying a bottle of red table wine with cheeses and bread. They were lost in their guidebook, oblivious.
Jonah whispered to Madge, “You’re closest. He’ll pick you first.”
“I don’t want to be first,” she said, her voice breaking.
After scanning the room again, the man reached over and pulled the wooden stake from Madge’s heart, set it aside, and grabbed her with his pudgy fingers.
He dipped her in the syrup, and she dribbled across the table into his mouth.
“Ungh,” Madge gasped as his teeth tore into her, leaving a crescent-shaped gap. He was missing a canine, so a piece of ham dragged out of her chest and dangled from the side of his mouth like a pink medallion. He nonchalantly slurped it in and ground it up with his molars as he unceremoniously tossed the rest of Madge back onto the melamine plate with her three horrified siblings.
His mouth was enormous, Madge was almost half gone. She lay on the plate with melted cheese and house special sauce oozing out of the open wound, dissolving the powdered sugar nearby. His mustache, shaped like a broom, had swept tiny bits of Madge’s toasted egg coating from her skin and they stuck there between the hairs as if they were taunting the three leftover siblings with a macabre warning.
